Page 221 - Folsom Street Blues: A Memoir of 1970s SoMa and Leatherfolk in Gay San Francisco

Folsom Street Blues 205

in weathered pots now stood guard by the steps. A metal security
gate protected the doors. The basement window had been filled
in with glass bricks.
I thought of my front door I easily kicked open one night
when I forgot my keys. I could have knocked since Luc was
upstairs. It was easier to kick it in.
I thought of Luc, who had moved to Paris, taken a lover, and
got real film roles in French cinema. He had been in a film with
Isabelle Adjani, a feat he loved to brag about when he visited me
in Chicago in 1989. We had both seen her in Francois Truffaut’s
The Story of Adele H. in San Francisco. Luc died of AIDS the
summer of 1991.
My old hangouts South of Market were gone. The Ambush
and Fe-Be’s had both closed the summer of 1986. Allan Lowery’s
Leatherneck and the Drummer Compound were history before I
left the City. The last I had heard Allan was living in Denver. He
was now MIA.
A young man opened the security gate, came down the
cement steps with a basket of laundry, and entered the basement.
What sort of fantasies was he living in my old flat? I didn’t want
to know. Like unrequited love, sometimes not knowing can be
more exciting than knowing and being disappointed.
“Do you want pictures of anything else?” Ken said. I was
back in the present.
“Yes,” I said. “I want a picture on Howard Street where Rob-
ert Opel’s Fey-Way Studios used to be.” We hiked back up 9th
Street to Howard. I squinted, trying to visualize the first homo-
masculine art gallery in San Francisco.
Yes. There it was, back from the corner a little, 1287 Howard
Street. It was no longer the leather art gallery created by Robert
Opel, the Academy Awards streaker. Wild opening night invita-
tion-only parties were a thing of the past. It was no longer a crime
scene where Robert Opel had been mysteriously murdered and
Camille O’Grady and Anthony Rogers threatened. The yellow
crime tape was long gone.
The post-earthquake building was now a renovated four-flat
at a tony address in SoMa. I wondered if the people living there